Patrick deWitt - Ablutions

He is eager to return to his routine and judging by his looks has already indulged profoundly in his drug of choice. He intends to make up for lost time, he says, with ninety days of his life stolen away forever when he wouldn't hurt a soul in the world, and when every day is a gift from God. He tucks the twenty away and turns a critical eye on you. He has heard you are doing poorly and asks if he might help. He infers that your job is in jeopardy but will not name the source of this information. "You're getting too deep up in it," he says. "Why do you think they call 'em depressants? You ought to do like me, see?" He points to his eyes. "Stimulants. Stimulated." Thanking Junior for his concern and insights, and promising to return soon for a longer visit, you walk to the front door of the bar. "Stay positive," he says in parting.

The room is already full and tossing or listing as a vessel over rough waters. Simon, returned to the role of manager, catches your eye and makes a show of psychically mutilating your character from across the bar. (At first he had refused the offer to resume his previous duties but a bonus was offered, a trip to some desert resort, and he came back to work with an extreme sunburn/new attitude. You are happy that he is in command again; you felt a keen pity for him when he was demoted, to the point that you wished he might "be killed.") He throws a rag at your face and nods in the direction of the bathroom. "Clean it up," he says. He is very angry but you do not attempt any excuses or penitent greetings; you walk past the line and into the men's room where you find a large pile of excrement perched on the seat of the toilet. Though this is the personification of your work fears you do not so much as sigh but take up a handful of napkins and, holding your breath, pick up the pile to ease it into the clogged, near-overflowing toilet, only its weight is too terrible to consider and you drop it into the filthy water. This creates a splash and your thighs are covered and you inhale the smell and vomit straight away like a fire hose and it covers the toilet seat and tank and spreads across the floor. Simon is standing behind you. "You'll have to clean the puke up too, mate," he says. "That's just the way of it." The child actor is standing in the doorway laughing and calling to Curtis that he might also witness the scene. Now they are both laughing and holding their stomachs and Simon is sorry for you and pushes them back down the hall and asks you in a mournful tone to try to finish the job hastily as there is a backup of dirty glasses and after all it is Saturday night.

You mop up the vomit and head to the bar to wash the stacks of glasses, hoping to numb your active mind in this mindless work but find that you cannot. You move sideways toward the whiskey assortment but there is Simon, shaking his head. "Not tonight," he says. Half an hour later he steps away for a cigarette and you rush to pour out three pints of alcohol, two Jamesons and one well gin, and you take these to the end of the bar where the child actor and Curtis are sitting elbow to elbow. They are still laughing at you and you nod good-naturedly before presenting a pint to each of them and holding yours high and calling it a race whereby the loser pays. They are rippling from bad street cocaine and gulp hungrily at the glasses and in three minutes they have finished up, neck and neck. You have secretly emptied two-thirds of your whiskey into the trash can but point to the remainder and say the round is on you, and the child actor and Curtis cheer, and you drink what is left in the glass and return to work.

As you bus the room and drain the sinks and replace the limes and olives and ice and napkins and straws and liquor and juices you keep a close watch on Curtis and the child actor, for no amount of cocaine can overpower a pint of eighty-proof alcohol consumed in so short a time, and you are curious to see how the drinks will take them. At first there is no noticeable difference other than their sudden, shocked silence. Then the smiles drop from their faces and their heads look to have tripled in weight and their eyes lose all focus and the child actor reaches out for a glass of water that is not there. Ten minutes later Curtis falls from his stool and does not get up. The child actor is afraid and uses his last burst of energy to push through the crowd to the bathroom. As he rounds the corner you see vomit spray from his nose holes and Simon turns to you with the mop and says, "I'm afraid it just isn't your night." He is laughing and you should be too but you cannot laugh or smile anymore. Raymond looks up from his drawings and corrals you as you pass. He is drunk and he brings his little ruler to your forehead and drags its edge from your hairline to the bridge of your nose and says, "You are forgiven." You snatch the ruler away and whip it over Raymond's head and it fans across the room and hits an oblivious fat woman on her chin. Her male companion stands and bares his fists but he does not know where the ruler came from. The woman covers her face and starts to cry.

Heading down the hall a man asks if you are working and you point to the mop and bug your eyes at the question and he hands you a cellular phone he has found. This gives you an idea and you do not clean up the vomit but lock yourself into the storage room and call 911 to report your suspicion that there is a bomb set to explode on the premises of the bar. You give a detailed account of an overheard conversation between two swarthy, bearded men and before you are even off the phone you can hear the shrieks of the customers and the breaking of glasses as firemen rush through the bar to clear the room. You reach up for a bottle of Jameson and break the seal, taking a long drink and inhaling deeply from a cigarette. When the evacuation is completed you let yourself out of the storage room and the bar is empty, and you walk from one side to the other drinking the whiskey and smoking, and crying softly — you cannot tell if the reason is relief or sadness. You look for Curtis's body but it has been moved. On the bar where Raymond was sitting you find a half-crumpled drawing of an adolescent boy, shirtless and in cutoffs, with a penis like a lasso. He is whipping it over his head and looks very happy to be living. You stuff this into your pocket and walk to the men's room where you find the child actor in a ball beneath the sink. There is drool draining from the corner of his mouth and his eyes are open to slits but you cannot see his pupils, only the reddened whites, and his breath is indefinable and you stand and kick him hard in the stomach and he vomits a cupful of gin and bile. Wiping the tears from your face you set your whiskey bottle and cigarette on the sink countertop and stand back against the far bathroom wall and rush forward to kick him in the center of his moaning face.

Discuss the renting of a vehicle and your conversation with the pockmarked counter man about the cars he has to offer you and then about the cars he does not have to offer but that he wants to speak of anyway, foreign and luxury automobiles he hopes to someday sit in and drive around in and whose horns he would like to honk and whose powerful stereo systems would push air through his hair. Discuss his lewd innuendoes when you say you do not care for the color or make of the rental but only the size, as you plan to lie prone inside its walls. You make no visible response to the intimations, being medicated on fat white pills, with many more in an aspirin bottle stashed in your suitcase (you scattered a dozen aspirins atop the white pills as a diversionary tactic), and the counter man, understanding there will be no mannish banter, drops his head to tap chicken-like on his computer.

You select a truck with a shell or camper top and when the man asks for your destination you tell him you are driving to the Grand Canyon and he makes one last pass at friendship, asking for the purpose of your trip (he is typing and speaking at the same time, which impresses you), and as you have no real reason but only an elusive, mesmeric feeling for going, you tell him a lie, which is this: When you were twelve years old you visited the Grand Canyon with your mother and father and spent three happy days and nights in the area, camping out under the stars, burning hot dogs over a barbecue pit and watching them fall from the sticks into the fire, cursing, catching and killing lizards and snakes — all the wiles and whims of any fast-paced boyhood. Or this at least is what you have been told took place those years past because you cannot, inexplicably, remember a single thing about the vacation, not the canyon's alleged breathtaking scale or the mules that are said to carry camera-laden passengers the eight miles down a treacherous trail to the canyon's shaded floor, and you share your frustrations with the counter man, telling him how bothered you are that one of the world's wonders has been shuffled from your mind, and you tell him that at the end of the day you simply believe the Grand Canyon deserves another chance to make a proper, durable impression.